


Let Us Punish, Since We are History

by TrollingfromtheBarricade (ShitpostingfromtheBarricade)



Category: 19th Century CE France RPF, Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: (though why you would want to share this is beyond me), Battle Of Waterloo, Don't copy to another site, Established Relationship, HAPPY WATERLOO, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Napoleon pov, Rain, ambiguous era, as always Napoléon is kinda a shitty person, but whatever it is Is Established, no one more than themselves, what that relationship is evades everyone
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-18
Updated: 2020-06-18
Packaged: 2021-03-03 20:29:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,753
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24771661
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShitpostingfromtheBarricade/pseuds/TrollingfromtheBarricade
Summary: Nothing is wrong.Nothing noteworthy, nothing upsetting, nothing like dread creeping up on Napoléon as the date draws nearer with every rotation of the earth.It is June 18th, and it is raining.Warnings:vaguely unhealthy relationship dynamic
Relationships: Napoléon I de France | Napoléon Bonaparte/Marius Pontmercy
Comments: 6
Kudos: 8





	Let Us Punish, Since We are History

**Author's Note:**

> It is deathly important to me that you know that these are all quotes from the Bricc--mostly from the Waterloo chapter (2.1.1-19), but one section was borrowed from 3.3.6.
> 
> Painstakingly beta'd by [PieceOfCait](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PieceOfCait/pseuds/PieceOfCait), who never asked for any of this.

Nothing is wrong.

If anyone had asked Napoléon, this is how he would have answered, because nothing is wrong. Today is simply another day in an endless procession of months and years. Nothing noteworthy, nothing upsetting, nothing like dread creeping up on him as the date draws nearer with every rotation of the earth.

It is June 18th, and it is raining.

“I-Imperial Majesty?”

Of course, no one has ever asked: for one thing, nothing is wrong; for another, this is the first time since 1820 that Napoléon has had company through such an insignificant date. “What is it?”

“If, uh. If I might be so bold as to ask…is Your Imperial Majesty feeling all right?”

“Of course I am,” he snaps impatiently.

“Of course,” the black-haired youth quickly affirms, “only…”

“What?”

“Your Majesty is sitting in the dark, Sir.”

So he is. “Yes, well, nothing is wrong.”

“Of course,” repeats the subject. “Would Your Imperial Majesty like me to get the lights?”

A snarl curls at the corner of Napoléon’s mouth. “If I had wanted lights, I would have told you.”

“I see. Beg your pardon, Grace.”

It’s not a proper address, but Napoléon decides (as he is troublingly prone to do with this particular follower) that it is not worth reprimanding. “Pardon granted.”

The subject takes his usual place at Napoléon’s feet. On a different day this might bring him comfort (another phenomenon that he had decided long ago not to pay any particular mind to), but today it only further serves to deepen his frown. “Not there.”

The youth’s eyes remain studiously and respectfully averted. “Would Your Majesty like me to leave?”

“No.”

Creases furrow between the boy’s brow, worry etched plainly. “What would my liege have me do, then?”

“I—” A sigh. “Where you are will do for now.”

“All right then.” With someone else it might come across as impertinence, but sincerity rings true as his follower’s head resumes its usual place against the outside of Napoléon’s knee; something like pain and nausea twists in his gut, and suddenly he is once more no longer certain if his desire for company outweighs the need to suffer through this day in solitude.

“You know,” says Napoléon suddenly, threading his fingers into the softness of the boy’s dark hair, “the Battle of Waterloo was an enigma.” The youth remains carefully still at the observation but doesn’t say anything, so Napoléon continues forth. “Blücher saw it only in fire, and Wellington understood none of it.

“Look at the reports,” he continues with a scoff. “The bulletins are confused, the commentary foggy. The former stammer, the latter falter. Jomini separates the battle of Waterloo into four periods; Muffling divides it into three tides of fortune; Charras alone, though on some points ignorant, had perceived the characteristic contours of that catastrophe of human genius—me—struggling with divine destiny.”

His subject hums into the knee of Napoléon’s trousers.

“I had been impeached by the infinite,” he explains. “My fall was decreed. 

“I had annoyed God.”

“Imperial Emperor?”

He ignores the youth in favor of keeping the buzzing of his head at bay. “This light of history is pitiless; it has a strange and divine quality that, luminous as it is, and precisely because it is luminous, often casts a shadow just where we saw a radiance; out of the same man it makes two phantoms, and the one attacks and punishes the other, the darkness of the despot struggles with the splendor of the captain. Hence a truer measure in the final judgment of the nations. Babylon violated diminishes Alexander; Rome enslaved diminishes Caesar; massacred Jerusalem diminishes Titus. Tyranny follows the tyrant. Woe to the man who leaves behind a shadow that bears his form.”

“Sir, are you quite sure—”

“Allow me to sketch a picture,” he pushes, stomach twisting and tightening. “It would be almost superfluous, I on horseback, spyglass in hand, on the heights of Rossomme, on June 18th, 1815. Everyone has seen me. The calm profile under the little cocked hat of the school of Brienne, the green uniform, the white facings concealing the stars on my breast.” Perhaps he can distract the subject, turn the boy’s mind to more pleasant diversions; if the stutter of the dark-haired youth’s breath and the shudder that had run through his body at a particularly rough tug of his hair are anything to judge by, it would not be so large a berth to bridge. 

Napoléon continues, lowering his voice and hoping to deflect the youth’s attention from his now-trembling hands. “The gray overcoat concealing the epaulets, the bit of red sash under the waistcoat, _the leather breeches.”_ His followers looses another quivering breath. “The white horse with a saddle blanket of purple velvet with crowned N’s and eagles in the corners, the Hessian boots over silk stockings, the silver spurs, the Marengo sword— 

“This whole image of the last Caesar is alive in everyone’s imagination, applauded by half the world…rebuked by the rest.” 

“Napoléon…” and this time, it sounds entirely too close to sympathy.

“What share of the defeat is mine?” he demands. “Should the shipwreck be imputed to the pilot?” He should stop, he is drawing entirely too close to the issue he has avoided confronting with himself for over two centuries now, but a dam has broken in his chest, and he can do nothing but continue:

“Was my evident physical decline accompanied by a corresponding mental deterioration? Had twenty years of war worn down the sword as well as the sheathe, the soul as well as the body? Was the veteran detrimental to the captain? In a word, was my genius, as many good historians have thought, in eclipse? Had I put on a frenzy to disguise my declining powers from myself? Was I beginning to waver under the confusion of a random blast? Was I becoming—a grave fault of a general—careless of danger? In that class of great physical men who may be called giants, is there an age where our genius becomes shortsighted? Old age has no hold on the geniuses of the ideal; for the Dantes and Michelangelos, to grow older is to grow greater; for the Hannibals and the Bonapartes, is it to diminish? Had I lost my sense of victory? Could I no longer recognize the shoal, no longer detect the snare, no longer discern the crumbling edge of the abyss? Had I lost the instinct of disaster? Was I—who formerly knew all the paths to victory and who, from the height of my chariot of lightning, pointed them out with a solemn finger—now under such dark hallucination as to drive my tumultuous train of legions over the precipices? Was I gripped, at forty-six, by a supreme madness? Was this titanic driver of Destiny now only a monstrous suicide?”

_“I think not.”_

The abruptness of the assertion catches Napoléon off-guard: in all their time together, he is not certain he has ever heard the youth take so sharp a tone nor so vehement a stand on anything. Now, however, the boy turns, grasping one of Napoléon’s hands in both of his and looking fiercely into his emperor’s eyes.

“You were to my father, who served under you at that great battle, only a beloved captain, recipient of admiration and devotion; to me, however, you are something more. Listen to it now.

“You are the predestined builder of the French, succeeding the Romans in the mastery of the world. You are the stupendous architect of a downfall, the successor to Charlemagne, of Louise XI, of Henry IV, of Richelieu, of Louis XIV, and of the Committee of Public Safety, undoubtedly with your blemishes, your faults, your crimes—that is to say, _being human—”_ Napoléon opens his mouth to speak but finds himself promptly cut off. “—but noble in your faults. Brilliant in your blemishes. Mighty in your crimes.”

The youth’s expression turns unexpectedly soft as one of the hands that had been gripping Napoléon’s reaching up to caress his cheek. Against his better judgment, Napoléon finds himself leaning into the touch, watching the shadows cast across the subject’s face as he continues.

“You are the preordained man who forced all nations to say ‘the Great Nation.’ You are better still: you are the very incarnation of France, conquering Europe by the sword that you held and the world by light that you shed. In you, I see the flashing specter that will always rise over the frontier, that will guard the future. Despot, but dictator; ‘despot’ resulting from a republic and summing up a revolution.

“Napoléon, you are to me the people-man as Jesus is the God-man. If that makes any sense.”

Not an ounce, but he can appreciate the follower’s fervor nevertheless. “But…that battle—” 

Another uncharacteristic reaction: an impatient huff. It is as unsettling as it is endearing. _“It was raining!”_

“It…” Napoléon blinks. “It had been raining.” 

“You couldn’t move the cannons.”

“I could not.”

“Your troops were slowed, there was nothing you could do.”

“Nothing I could do,” Napoléon repeats softly.

“Let us render unto Fortune the things that are Fortune’s, and unto God the things that are God’s. What is Waterloo? A victory? No. A winning lottery ticket. Won by Waterloo, paid for by France—by _you.”_

Before Napoléon realizes what is happening Marius is already clutched in his arms, pulled halfway across his lap as, for the first time today—the first time on this day in hundreds of years—Napoléon finally feels capable of breathing again. “Thank you,” he murmurs into the soft curls, burrowing his face into the juncture where neck meets shoulder. 

Tentative arms wrap around him in answer as the other man relaxes into the embrace. “It was nothing.”

Opening his eyes, he abruptly pulls back. “Why is this room so dark? Subject, the lights! And a book, I am in the mood for a reading.”

The youth springs to his feet, heading toward the doorway. “What book, Your Highness? One of your biographies, perhaps? Or that of Alexander the Great?”

“No, no,” he eschews, “nothing so heavy as all of that. Today I would like a story—read me that author I like so well.” 

“Dumas?”

“Heavens, no. His friend, the verbose one. The second volume, if you will.” Outside the rain continues to pour down, but in the warm light of the room it has lost its menace and scorn. “Just the first book will do fine.”

**Author's Note:**

> Napoléon [actually did admire Alexander the Great and aspired to be as great at him](https://beforeitsnews.com/economy/2013/02/napoleon-on-alexander-the-great-2490658.html). An additional factoid that everyone should know: _Alexander was only defeated once, _the Cynic philosophers said long after his death,_ and that was by Hephaestion's thighs._ Do with that information in this context What You Will.
> 
> I know Napoléon died in 1821, but he died in May, so 1820 was the last anniversary he was alive for.
> 
> As always, I welcome the love and appreciation of my fellow Empereur's Mercy shippers and the moldy produce of everyone with a brain cell-count above the single-digits with wide and open arms, both in the comments below and at my [tumblr](http://shitpostingfromthebarricade.tumblr.com)!


End file.
